Sheep Shots

There were a few odd bits of yarn left from all the fair isle-type sweaters I made for Dulaan some months back (scroll down).

I attempted to make them into a hat or two for Ship Support, but the colors were too close to make nice contrasting stripes and I didn't have enough of any of them to make decent looking hats.

Earlier this week, I hit on another brainstorm (uh, oh!) and decided to try a little stranded colorwork with what was left. What follows is the "recipe" for a "Cross Country Ski Hat" that will be winging its way to New Orleans with some other stuff.



I started with a gauge swatch (okay, I faked it, knowing that this is a "community" hat) and measured 5.5 stitches/inch or thereabouts in the stranded stuff. (This is traditional "sport-weight" yarn, Pinguoin Pingofrance, mostly acrylic/wool blend.)

I wanted a hat that's sufficiently snug to stay on so I cast on an even number of stitches (in this case, 100 -about 18" worth), joined and knit about 1" of garter stitch (k 1 round, p one round) for the band.

The pattern is one that I used to allow the mis-matched shades of blue and bright accents to "blend" into each other. It is:

NONONONONONONONO all the way around where N=New Color and O= Old Color

for two rounds, then NNNNNN for as many rounds as I had yarn, leaving a enough (you have to guess--and be liberal in your guess unless you enjoy tinking 2 color stranded knitting!) to become Old Color when I switched to the next color.

Do you follow? Repeat.




Here's the inside of the finished tube. I did a 3-needle bind off at the top when the tube was a little (like 1/2") longer than it is wide.

I will confess that I didn't mess with "jogless jog" on this one because there didn't seem to be a Jog Issue. (I guess if you look carefully, you can see the end-of-round, but to me, it passes the Drive-by Test).

Weave the ends in, snugging up the first and last stitch carefully.






Now, while it's still inside out, bring the two top corners together and stitch them together securely.

Smooth out the fabric.

Turn right side out.






Voila!

Warm and cozy (because the fabric is mostly doubled). The pleats on the sides expand to fit.

I will confess (again) that I toyed with the idea of shaping the top of this hat like a beanie but couldn't figure out how to keep the pattern going (and didn't want stripes--see note at the top of this post about what a Bad Idea that was with this particular batch of colors). The 3-needle bind off came to the rescue.

It seams that I might have enough yarn left for yet another of these.

And on a personal note: I am taking a 5-day weekend because 1) I deserve it and 2) if I don't start using some of my vacation time, I will lose all but 5 days. That ain't happening!

Labels: big people clothes, charity